It Can Get Icy in Winter — La Barillette / La Dole

How does a 32 kilometres bike ride take over 5 hours? Ice, Ice, more ice, snow, hiking, etc.

Sometimes great rides require a bit of sacrifice.

The price of this amazing Jura mountain climb above Geneva was a pretty treacherous descent.

It never occurred to me that it would be possible to ride to La Barillette in winter (or even spring) – until I saw Bastien’s incredible photos – see here. I, of course, was insanely jealous. 😉 And when I showed the photos to Eric, there was no choice but to try and climb it.

To be clear, this is not a winter climb for the faint hearted. This steep 12 km climb is icy immediately – the instant it enters the woods. Even Eric considered turning back. Frankly, only idiots would cycle here. But whenever there was a light snow covering, or by riding on the edge of the road, it was “possible” to usually ride.

It was another pea soup day in Geneva, but we soon got above the clouds. The distant Alps views were so beautiful that we forgot that the descent would be near suicidal.

Luckily about half way up, the road surface was snowier and less icy.

At La Barillette, we decided to hike to Col de Porte (deep snow – no bikes sadly). It was a lot further than it looked, but the views? Amazing.

I won’t say much about the descent, except to say the first half was difficult but fun, and then …… see the above video again.

Will have a look here : http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/6866026.jpg Do you recognize the 2 signs for the “nr.5 hiking path”? I think we did pass the Col du Vuarne without really paying enough attention to the sign 🙁 Well we can always go back…yes we can! I found the coordinates for Col du Vuarne on the internet and checked it against your bikemap track. Spot on.

Will,
You are ever so slightly nuts.
Not sure if you have tried it, but for filming, mount your camera phone on the handlebars with the mighty cable ties. It can make for some cool footage, up hill is a bit boring though.

You should really try studded tires, ideal for that kind of road. You probably said it somewhere but the road is cleared for the people who work in the radar station at la Dole but it is closed to general circulation.

I will have to try it out in a couple of weeks when i get back from holiday – currently my studded MTB wheels are down in Grenoble. They are pretty amazing though on hard snow and ice. I was also considering the Gex – Peron transversal route as a possibility.